Monica Lewinsky had a secret to tell. It was Memorial Day weekend, 1996,
and the former White House intern was hiking along a trail at a spa in upstate
New York. Her companion was Dale Young, a Scarsdale, N.Y., businesswoman who
had become a friend of both Monica and her mother, Marcia Lewis. "I can't
stand it," Lewinsky burst out, according to Young. "I've got to talk to you.
I've got to tell you what's going on, but please, don't tell anyone." Young
agreed. It was then, says Young, that Lewinsky told her she was "involved with
the president" and proceeded to describe how.

Last week, Young, subpoenaed by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, was
compelled to testify before a federal grand jury about her talks with
Lewinsky, and she told the same story to Newsweek. Young, 47, is the first
witness to go on the record recounting conversations with Monica Lewinsky
about her alleged sexual relationship with President Clinton. (Though
prosecutors cannot discuss grand jury testimony, witnesses are free to.) Young
is a friend of Monica's family; in March 1996, with her husband, James, a
house builder, Young threw a party at her Scarsdale home to celebrate the
publication of Marcia Lewis's book, "The Private Lives of the Three Tenors."
Young's story generally supports accounts of taped conversations between
Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, who is scheduled to testify before the grand jury
this week. Young's version offers new details about Lewinsky's alleged
relationship with the president, and one important twist: Young's story
suggests that Monica claimed the president, at least in the beginning, sought
to put limits on his sexual involvement with Lewinsky because he was afraid
that he might one day be questioned about it.

Young's conversations with Lewinsky may bear on whether Lewinsky or Clinton
perjured themselves by denying a sexual relationship, but the story she told
Newsweek does nothing to resolve the question of whether anyone tried to
obstruct justice. Starr would not comment on Young's testimony. "We're not
going to dignify this story with a comment," said White House spokesman Jim
Kennedy. "Monica Lewinsky continues to have no comment on these public
allegations," said Judy Smith, her spokesperson. Newsweek reporters were not
able to turn up any serious doubts about Young's credibility. To be sure, she
is described by her friends and neighbors as chatty, hot-tempered and bawdy. A
member of the town Republican committee in the late '80s, she disapproves of
Clinton. She likes to challenge authority  her business is to contest tax
assessments for homeowners. But even business competitors interviewed last
week by Newsweek described her as honest. She told Newsweek that she was
stepping forward now because she had been required to testify and she believes
her account will ultimately help Lewinsky, whom she says she praised to the
grand jury as "a wonderful, effusive, beautiful, bubbly young lady" who "has
suffered enough."

During their seven-and-a-half-mile hike around the Catskills spa that
weekend in 1996, Young says, Lewinsky claimed to be having a physical
relationship with Clinton. There was, by Young's account, intimate touching in
a small hideaway study off the Oval Office and sexually charged phone calls
late at night. According to Young, Lewinsky described how she would contrive
situations to see Clinton and how she anxiously awaited his calls. She told
the older woman how she had bought gifts for the president, including a tie
and a historical book from an antique store. But, Lewinsky told Young, Clinton
had established certain sexual ground rules at the outset. "Nothing was ever
taken to completion," said Young. Young concluded that the physical intimacy
between the president and the intern was "basically like foreplay." According
to Young, Lewinsky told her that Clinton had an elaborate explanation for
setting boundaries. The president, says Young, told Lewinsky that "he didn't
trust anybody ... that people have come forward, people who he's been involved
with have gone to the media, they have gone to their lawyers. He felt it
really wasn't oral sex if it wasn't completed."

How does this account compare with Linda Tripp's? According to sources
familiar with the 20 hours of Tripp's secretly taped phone conversations with
Lewinsky, the precise physical relationship between Lewinsky and Clinton is
never spelled out. Nor is there anything explicit on the 90-minute tape heard
by Newsweek last January. (Lewinsky began talking to Tripp about her
involvement with Clinton in late 1996, months after Young says Monica first
confided in Young.) On the Tripp tapes, the two women talk as though a
relationship exists, but Lewinsky never goes into exact detail. Tripp has told
the FBI that Lewinsky told her of having "oral sex" with the president.
According to sources who have heard a tape of a conversation from last
October, Lewinsky tells Tripp her sexual relationship with Clinton never
involved "penetration."

The precise details may have legal significance. In her own Jan. 7
affidavit, Lewinsky swore that she didn't have a "sexual relationship" with
President Clinton. She was not required to define what she meant by that.
Clinton, however, is in a trickier bind. At his deposition last Jan. 17 by
lawyers representing Paula Jones, the president was shown a definition of
"sexual relations" that included "contact with genitalia" and other body parts
"with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person." Clinton
testified, "I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky," a denial
he later publicly repeated.

Over that 1996 Memorial Day weekend, Young says she warned Lewinsky to stay
away from Clinton. Young continued to exchange phone calls with Lewinsky and
her mother, Marcia. Between November 1995 and February 1998, Young's phone
records  turned over to the FBI  show 101 phone calls to the Watergate
apartment that Lewinsky and her mother shared. (Most of the calls went to
Marcia.) Young says Lewinsky's next real confession to her about the president
did not occur until Labor Day weekend, 1997. According to Young, Lewinsky told
her that Clinton had just broken off the relationship. The president, Young
said, offered Lewinsky a tearful explanation: "He wanted Chelsea to be proud
of him and he wanted to be a good husband and he didn't want to do anything
like this anymore."

A few days later, Young got a note from Monica, which Young later showed to
Newsweek. It reads in part: "I think the end of this whole trauma is over. I
just wish my heart didn't have to be broken in all of this. Well, I hope you
and your family are well. Again, Dale, thanks for being such a good friend.
xxxooo, love, Monica." At about the same time, Young says she got a frantic
call from Marcia Lewis. According to Young, Marcia said she had just learned
that Monica had confided in Young about her relationship with Clinton;
tearful, distraught about her daughter's predicament, Marcia asked for advice.
Young says she told Marcia to call Betty Currie, the president's personal
secretary. Monica had told Young that Currie was a "conduit" between her and
the president. Young told Marcia that she should threaten to expose Currie's
role in order to "make damn sure" that Monica never got in to see the
president again. According to Young, Marcia called back a few days later and
said that Currie had refused to discuss the matter. (Through her lawyer,
Currie had no comment; Lewis's lawyer, Billy Martin, said that any suggestion
his client called Currie is "outrageously false.")

After the scandal broke in January, Young called Marcia offering to help,
but Monica's mother was despondent. "This is ugly business," said Marcia. On
Feb. 28, Young says, she spoke to Lewinsky for almost an hour. Young expressed
some irritation about a remark by Lewinsky's lawyer at the time, William
Ginsburg, that Monica would not hurt Clinton in the investigation because the
president had been a friend of Israel's. Lewinsky replied, "Everything
[Ginsburg] says is true. I don't want to see Clinton hurt. I am a friend of
Israel." Young advised Monica, "Don't go to jail for that guy," says Young.
According to Young, Lewinsky replied: "I won't do that, I'm going to tell the
truth." In a possible reference to Starr's interest in bringing obstruction-
of-justice charges, Young says that Lewinsky added, "I don't know anything
that they're interested in finding out about." The conversation, said Young,
had a sad tone. "I asked her what I can do for her and she said, 'There's
nothing anybody can do for me.'&nbsp"

Because Young is the first confidante of Lewinsky's to speak publicly, her
comments are likely to stir controversy, and her story raises numerous
questions. Isn't Young's account nothing more than hearsay? Isn't her
assertion that "nothing ever came to completion" hard to reconcile with
Tripp's later and still-unconfirmed account of being shown a "semen-stained
dress" by Lewinsky? But Young's story is now sworn testimony. The most
important corroboration  or refutation  will have to come from Lewinsky. And
that depends on negotiations still underway between her lawyers and the
independent counsel.